Make your own light lunch for work in summer!

As a mommy (laughs), I still eat my mom's dinner every day since I can remember. My mother is not a woman who knows how to cook traditional dishes (zongzi, carrot cake, oily rice, etc.) and starts to learn how to cook after getting married, and she hardly cooks any foreign dishes, including light vegetable salads (and does not like cold food), Pasta, gratin...my dinner table is all three dishes and one soup like a quick fry restaurant or a buffet restaurant.

When I left home at the age of 20 and went north, the most painful thing for me was that I couldn’t live with others, and most of the time I could only live in a small suite without a kitchen. But why would a mother who was fed by her mother since she was a child want a kitchen? Prices in Taipei were extremely high, especially in the elite area of Section 4, Zhongxiao East Road, where I was working at the time. Office workers like this were walking in the high-end East District and working as editors of magazines with a high degree of freedom. The salary was not small at that time, but it was really impossible to compare the salary. Colleagues who live in Taipei and don’t need to rent a house can easily spend 200 yuan for a lunch. They need very accurate numerical skills from time to time, and they will not run out of money in their pockets before receiving their salary!

So "cook it yourself" becomes one of the options for saving money. For example, a piece of toast, a box of eggs, and a pack of ham should still be cheaper than buying them at the price at that time, and it saves the time spent queuing and getting up and getting up early, going out, and queuing. You can solve breakfast at home well.

But the most important thing to save is not breakfast, but lunch and dinner. Even though my income at the time was considered high among my peers of the same seniority and age, staying in the Golden East for lunch or dinner was a terrible expense. Later, my girlfriend and I rented a house with a kitchen, and my days of "bringing a bento to work" began.

To say "bring a bento" is to say that you are actually bringing leftovers/kitchen waste to satisfy your hunger (laughs, of course it's a joke ). At that time, there was a supermarket under the building on Section 4 of Xinglong Road in Muzha. After arriving in Taipei for more than a year, I had no idea to look for a "traditional market", so I cooked my dinner and packed it in that supermarket. Lunch the next day.

1. It is really difficult to prepare meals for two people, and the portion in the supermarket is often large and not too large. The best way is to "bring a bento" to finish the food before it spoils. . The company has electric pots and microwave ovens for heating. The bento made by my cooking skills and food imagination at that time really looks like the kitchen waste in the kitchen waste bucket, but I still ate it for a long time, although the appearance is not good. Good, at least they can eat enough.

Many people think that "cooking" is a matter of spending time and effort, so they don't want to do something for themselves. Since my off-duty time at that time was after 6:30, it was already a little after 7:00 from the East District to Muzha, and when I prepared and cooked, I often had dinner at 9:00. (It doesn't matter if I'm not hungry, sometimes I go out to eat until three o'clock at noon XDDDDD, that swaying magazine life. Thanks to the boss for the freedom.) After dinner, it's ten o'clock to wash the dishes.

When some friends look at the lunch I'm making now and want to make something to bring to work, especially in this hot summer, the temperature is very suitable for eating cold food (and you don't have to go out for lunch, it's too hot.) Then I'll write about lunch. How to deal with light food fast and delicious!

The following are the ones that need to be cooked in hot water and those that can be eaten raw:

Raw (or ready to use):

All kinds of lettuce: lettuce, romaine, red and yellow peppers, gherkins, bean sprouts, all kinds of lettuce, purple cabbage, cabbage, carrots... (Because of the price, I will Looking at the price to buy, I don’t eat lettuce and red and yellow peppers very much recently. The lettuce is always expensive unless there is a special price, and I don’t often buy purple cabbage, cabbage, and carrots in large quantities at one time, usually little by little. If you touch it, it will break.)

All kinds of fruits: pineapples, tomatoes, bananas, kiwis, apples... (I tend not to buy more processed ones, so I rarely eat apples, or papayas, mangoes, etc. will have too much food waste. There is a mother who makes XDDD, and tomatoes will buy small tomatoes.)

Canned corn kernels (I buy raw corn to peel and boil it myself, which can prevent the canned food from going bad when it is opened) Canned tuna, ham (sliced or one piece), cold tofu (cut into small pieces)  …

Need to be cooked:

Vegetable starches: asparagus (traditional markets on rainy days) asparagus, broccoli, potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, okra, any kind of mushrooms, corn shoots, green beans, bamboo shoots, asparagus...

Egg meat: eggs, shrimp, small rolls (that can be cut into a circle), small octopus (the kind with a big head), snapper fillet, pork fillet, beef fillet, chicken breast, chicken thigh... ( Try to buy meat slices with a little oiliness, otherwise your salad will be very dry, I prefer chicken thighs.)

The above ingredients are enough for you to arrange and combine them to eat them all the time. It should be because the food is unlikely to be changed every day when you buy it once. You always have to eat the same thing for two or three days, so just change it yourself.

Next is the way of cooking.

Raw food should be washed and stored well. For wrapping lettuce and romaine lettuce, use "peeled", not cut, peel it from the outside to the inside, and it can be stored for a long time. The outermost layer of cabbage (or cabbage) is kept as the outermost layer of protection; do not cut the red and yellow peppers in half, but cut them into quarters or eighths (use a knife to make a cut from the middle first, and then eat as many as you want.) Draw another knife.) Don't "treat it once, eat it and cut it again." (Cut it when it's on the plate.)

Other fruits are cut into bite-sized or nice-looking sizes.

Cooked things are steamed, fried, boiled (or fried, but frying is more troublesome):

Steamed with an electric pot:

Put the egg on the plate without adding any water, put it in the electric cooker, and add an eight-point full measuring cup of water to the outer pot (I’m not counting this, anyway, more water means fully cooked, less water means undercooked egg yolk, and too much egg It is necessary to cook a little more water every day, and do not eat undercooked ones.)

At the same time, it can be steamed with eggs: potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkin (there will be more water in the outer pot), mushrooms can also be used, even chicken thighs or thicker pork pieces can also be bought (but the pork will be too much steamed too much. Hard, the water is not easy to handle), if you have time to spare, you can also make egg salad~ (I use a food processor to make it)

Fried:

fish meat. But you can also boil it with water, but those who are not losing weight do not need to reach this level, but it is indeed more convenient to boil with water if you want to freeze it. If eating at home, fry it with a little oil and have something warm on a cold plate.

Boiled:

Everything not mentioned above is boiled in water, you can add a little olive oil or salt to the water. It can also handle everything that needs to be boiled in one pot. (The lazy person's method is right) Put the heaviest flavor at the end. For example, fish and shrimp have the heaviest flavor, so you need to blanch bamboo shoots, mushrooms, and green vegetables first, but there is only one thing I will definitely put last: Okra, after cooking it, the water will be thick, so it needs to be placed at the end. If there is okra and shrimp and fish at the same time, I will open another pot of boiled shrimp and fish.

As for the boiling time, it will actually vary from person to person. After a few more times of boiling, you will know how long you want the taste to be.

Seasoning:

It is really not for people to eat only boiled water without adding anything. That's what people who want to maintain body fat do.

Salad dressing (with various combinations), soy sauce, bonito sauce are all good choices for you, you can even use honey, lemon or commercially available yogurt to mix your own flavors (I'm lazy, I I buy them all ready-made, unless I try to make my own on a whim.)

For fish and shrimp, just sprinkle some salt and pepper on it.

Boiled things can be boiled a little more at a time, and there is no problem in keeping them for two or three days (some people make ingredients for a week on Sunday, I don’t like them, they must be eaten within three days, and it can also be used for breakfast)

Is it difficult to bring your own bento? It's not difficult, try it. Sometimes it's just that you think it's going to take a lot of time or you spend a lot of time there thinking about it and not getting up to do it.

I am always laughed at as Mommy, if I can eat my own meals every day, how can you not get up if you are not Mommy? Ha ha ha ha.

It means that my mother really doesn't like what I cook (Mom, she hates whatever she does XDDDDD), so I can only continue to eat her cooking for dinner, and let her eat mine when she doesn't want to cook Rice! Ma Bao sometimes has to be dutiful and obedient to her mother. I can eat whatever she cooks, so I can't push her against her every day! (That is to say, I often say that my mother is happy to have two children who are not picky eaters!)

Photo: My lunch cooking. You can post on my instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sunline/ , I will post it if I cook it (unless it’s ugly and don’t want to shoot XDD), but I won’t write recipes hahaha. Recipes are for posting and writing books. My little recipe book: http://moo.im/a/0qwxCX (Would you like to buy it for 30 yuan XD)